One weird quirk about me that is that I’ve always been sort of opposed to drinking water over other beverages. The times in my life where I have developed a water habit have only happened for health reasons, not because I had suddenly developed a taste for it. At restaurants, glasses of water always looked unappealing to me. Due to the transparent nature of the water, I could see all the dust, leftover grime, dishwasher streaks, and floaters.

In my early 20’s, after I started a high paying (for a college student anyway) job as a consultant, my inclination was to finally buy all the gear that I had been salivating over for the past 4 years. Things like microphones, guitars (a large number of guitars) and cameras were purchased, and since I was living at home, there was no immediate financial consequence. I could continue living just fine with the rate that I was buying preamps, keyboards, and headphones.

There’s something about exiting your 20’s and hitting your mid-30’s (like a bird against the window) that makes you really stop and think about your physical health. Throughout the years, I have made numerous attempts to lose weight and/or become healthier (because those are not always the same thing). Some attempts had mixed results, like when I decided to jog every day for 30 minutes. I didn’t lose any weight in the process, but I did do cardio every day for a summer, and that was pretty useful.

“Just you wait until you get married. Your life choices get narrower.” “Just you wait until you have a child. Your life is no longer about you.” “Just you wait until you have two kids. It’s completely different than having one.” Seems like most of our time as a parent is spent either doing the “just wait” or the “right now.” I do the right now when I’m giving my kid a bath; a lot of coordination is required to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or drown.

After college, it seemed like anything anyone wanted to do was travel the world. Most of the marketing messages we as young graduates were subjected to was about getting out of our comfort zone and seeing foreign places, experiencing foreign cultures, all the while gaining perspective. The idea didn’t appeal to me. I had yet to develop my fear of airplanes that I’ve now mostly overcome, so it wasn’t fear, exactly… but it was more that I didn’t understand why there was this pressure from society to go somewhere, anywhere.